Oscar Acceptance Speeches, 1999

Leading up to the 2011 Oscars, we’ll showcase the past twenty years of Oscar Acceptance Speeches by Best Actress winners and Best Supporting Actress winners. (Note: In most cases, you’ll have to click through to YouTube in order to watch the speeches, as embedding has been disabled at the request of copyright owners.) 

Best Actress Nominees: 1999

Cate Blanchett – Elizabeth
Fernanda Montenegro –  Central Station
Gwyneth Paltrow – Shakespeare in Love
Meryl Streep – One True Thing
Emily Watson – Hilary and Jackie 

Best Supporting Actress Nominees: 1999

Kathy Bates – Primary Colors
Judi Dench – Shakespeare in Love
Brenda Blethyn – Little Voice
Rachel Griffiths – Hilary and Jackie
Lynn Redgrave – Gods and Monsters

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 Gwyneth Paltrow wins Best Actress for her performance in Shakespeare in Love.

Judi Dench (transcript only) wins Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Shakespeare in Love.

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See nominees and winners in previous years: 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998

Oscar Acceptance Speeches, 1998

Leading up to the 2011 Oscars, we’ll showcase the past twenty years of Oscar Acceptance Speeches by Best Actress winners and Best Supporting Actress winners. (Note: In most cases, you’ll have to click through to YouTube in order to watch the speeches, as embedding has been disabled at the request of copyright owners.)

Best Actress Nominees: 1998

Helena Bonham Carter – The Wings of the Dove
Julie Christie – Afterglow
Judi Dench – Mrs. Brown
Helen Hunt – As Good As It Gets
Kate Winslet – Titanic

Best Supporting Actress Nominees: 1998

Kim Basinger – L.A. Confidential
Joan Cusack – In & Out
Minnie Driver – Good Will Hunting
Julianne Moore – Boogie Nights
Gloria Stuart – Titanic

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Helen Hunt wins Best Actress for her role in As Good As It Gets.

 Kim Basinger wins Best Supporting Actress for her role in L.A. Confidential.

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See nominees and winners in previous years: 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997

Documentary: When Abortion Was Illegal

In this 1992 documentary directed by Dorothy Fadiman, women (and men) tell their stories about illegal abortions, reminding us of the necessity of safe and legal access for women.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1993, and is the first in a three-part series about abortion in America.

A Few Good Women

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought I’d highlight female veterans and some movies featuring female soldiers.

The news about female vets has been plentiful as of late, and none of it particularly good or encouraging. More female veterans than ever are homeless, and government-sponsored housing is in short supply, according to the Air Force Times.

The homeless female veteran is a relatively new phenomenon because only recently have so many women — more than 190,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan alone — been serving in the military, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Waynesburg University who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

The number of homeless female veterans have gone up — from 3 percent of all homeless veterans a decade ago to 5 percent, the VA says.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Last March, Salon.com published an article titled “The Private War of Women Soldiers” about widespread sexual assault in the military, which has currently serving women refusing to leave their cots at night for fear of being raped on their way to the latrines. Columbia professor Helen Benedict also writes of the intensity of dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) from combat and sexual assault.

Not everyone realizes how different the Iraq war is for women than any other American war in history. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since the war began in 2003, which means one in seven soldiers is a woman. Women now make up 15 percent of active duty forces, four times more than in the 1991 Gulf War. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, and 71 have died — more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined. And women are fighting in combat.

Officially, the Pentagon prohibits women from serving in ground combat units such as the infantry, citing their lack of upper-body strength and a reluctance to put girls and mothers in harm’s way. But mention this ban to any female soldier in Iraq and she will scoff.

“Of course we were in combat!” said Laura Naylor, 25, who served with the Army Combat Military Police in Baghdad from 2003-04. “We were interchangeable with the infantry. They came to our police stations and helped pull security, and we helped them search houses and search people. That’s how it is in Iraq.”

Women are fighting in ground combat because there is no choice. This is a war with no front lines or safe zones, no hiding from in-flying mortars, car and roadside bombs, and not enough soldiers. As a result, women are coming home with missing limbs, mutilating wounds and severe trauma, just like the men.

With the surge of women serving in the military, there doesn’t seem to be a correlative rise in female soldiers depicted in film. Here are a few movies featuring female soldiers. All plot summaries are from IMDb.

Courage Under Fire (1996)

The pilot of a rescue copter, Captain Karen Walden, died shortly before her helicopter crew was rescued after it crashed in Desert Storm. It first appears that she made a spectacular rescue of a downed helicopter crew, then held her own crew together to fight off the Iraqis after her copter crashed. LT Colonel Serling, who is struggling with his own demons from Desert Storm is assigned to investigate and award her the Medal of Honor. But some conflicting accounts from her crew and soldiers in the area, cause him to be question whether she deserves it. Written by Brian W Martz {B.Martz@Genie.com}

Rent Courage Under Fire from Netflix

A Few Good Men (1992)

In this dramatic courtroom thriller, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey’s Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is Lt. Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a “CODE RED”. Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren’t tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something’s fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee. Written by Matt Curtolo {curt@epix.net}

Rent A Few Good Men from Netflix

G.I. Jane (1997)

When a crusading chairperson of the military budget committee pressures the would be Navy secretary to begin full gender integration of the service, he offers the chance for a test case for a female trainee in the elite Navy SEALS commando force. Lt. Jordan O’Niel is given the assignment, but no one expects her to succeed in an inhumanly punishing regime that has a standard 60% dropout rate for men. However, O’Niel is determined to prove everyone wrong. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}

Rent G.I. Jane from Netflix

Home of the Brave (2006)

The day after they get the word they’ll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them – a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who’s a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman. Each of the four has come home changed, each feels dislocation. Group therapy, V.A. services, halting gestures from family and colleagues, and regular flashbacks keep the war front and center in their minds. They’re angry, touchy, and explosive: can a warrior find peace back home? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Rent Home of the Brave from Netflix

Lioness (2008)

Lioness presents the untold story of the first group of women soldiers in US history to be sent into direct ground combat, in violation of official policy. Told through intimate accounts, journal excerpts, archive footage, as well as interviews with military commanders, the film follows five women who served together for a year in Iraq. With captivating detail, this probing documentary reveals the unexpected course of events that began with using US women soldiers to defuse tensions with local civilians, but resulted in the women’s fighting in some of the bloodiest counter-insurgency battles of the war. Together the women’s candid narratives and scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view. Lioness is the first film to bridge the gap between perception and reality of the role women in the military are playing in Iraq, capturing an historical turning point for American society.

Read an interview with filmmakers Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers.

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Have we missed some good ones? Compared with the problems female vets face, most of these movies feel like token representations. Demi Moore actually won a Razzie for Worst Actress in G.I. Jane. I’ve left out the many depictions of female soldiers in science fiction films and TV shows (Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica immediately comes to mind), perhaps unfairly. Tell us movies we’ve left out in the comments section.

Documentary Review: Paris Was a Woman

Paris Was a Woman (1996)

Paris Was a Woman is a documentary about artists living in Paris during the time between the wars–specifically in the 1920s. Paris has always been a place for artists, but at this time, Prohibition, inexpensive living, and a general openness to different lifestyles and art made American women flock to the Left Bank area of the city. The film looks at Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Colette, Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbott, Gisele Freund, and Janet Flanner, among others.

The film will certainly be of interest to fans of these writers, artists, and other literary figures—in particular of Stein. There is home movie footage that most of us have probably never seen, and interviews with people intimate with the women in their Parisian heyday–and a lot of information from a housekeeper. One problem with the film, though, is that it’s really about lesbians living in Paris in the 1920s, which perpetuates the untruthful equation of lesbianism and feminism. Part of the problem might be that the film was released in 1995, and mainstream attitudes have changed to the extent that it may no longer be necessary to disguise a film about lesbian artists. In other words, I would like the film better if it wasn’t pretending to be something other than what it is.

In terms of quality, the film has its high and low points. One of my favorite things was a map of the homes, shops, and meeting places of the women—updated each time someone new was introduced. This visual really drives home the point about their close proximity, and makes me wonder how many neighborhoods—full of amazing artists—exist today. There are probably many, but with our fragmented modern lives, I don’t know of any. The quality of the film left something to be desired (making it look older than it is), and it seemed pretty disorganized, overall. This likely has to do with the fact that Paris Was a Woman was first a book, and was then turned into a documentary.

Perhaps the best part of the film was its emphasis on two women and their bookshops. Sylvia Beach was the owner of Shakespeare & Company, perhaps best known for publishing the first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which had been deemed obscene, making it unpublishible by mainstream houses. A sad irony is that, later, Joyce never paid Beach, who was virtually bankrupted by her action. Adrienne Monnier lent books to women who couldn’t afford to purchase them from her bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres, which was located across the street from Shakespeare & Company. Monnier and Beach also translated T.S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” into French for the first time.

Women nurturing—and even launching—the careers of men is nothing new. I think we often forget–or even never learn–to what extent, however. Ernest Hemingway served as an errand boy to Gertrude Stein before he became a published writer. She also bought paintings by Pablo Picasso when few other people would purchase his strange work. Despite my formalist reservations about the film (organization, film quality, clearness of content), it was amazing to see such a strong community of female artists living, working, and even making love together. It teaches us not only about these particular women, but about a city, an era, and, in some sense, about how to be an artist–as all good art, on some level, should.